Re: OT: to byte or not to byte... (was Re: OT: Rant about degres Celsius (was: introduction)

On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 06:56:06PM -0500, J Y S Czhang wrote:
> In a message dated 04.12.2001 06:22:27 AM, christophe.grandsire@FREE.FR
> writes:
>
> >"octet", the French word for "byte". Admit that it's less confusing than
> >the strange bit-byte of English :))) .
> >
>
>     *gigglaoctet*  BTW... In Spanish, _byte_ is _octeto_. (I looked this up
> recently...)
It's also an example of meaning skew. English "byte" doesn't mean eight
bits; it's a chunk of bits that the machine can handle as a unit, that's
usually larger than a bit and smaller than a word. Bytes were usually
between 6 and 9 bits, but some machines had variable size bytes, 1-36
bits. I would assume that a 9-bit byte would not be a octet or octeto?

--
David Starner - starner@okstate.edu, ICQ #61271672
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
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we'll still be freakin' friends. - "Freakin' Friends"

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